Читать книгу Love Potions Through the Ages: A Study of Amatory Devices and Mores онлайн

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Thus disturb’d, I arose, and laughing, took her up; immediately, lest any thing shou’d hinder the offering, she ran for new fire to the neighborhood, and had hardly got to the door, e’re I was set upon by three sacred geese, that daily, I believe, about that time were fed by the old woman; they made an hideous noise, and, surrounding me, one tears my coat, another my shoes, while their furious captain made nothing of doing so by my legs; till seeing my self in danger, I began to be in earnest, and snatching up one of the feet of our little table, made the valiant animal feel my arm’d hand; nor content with a slight blow or two, but reveng’d my self with its death:

Such were the birds Alcides did subdue,

That from his conquering arm t’ward Heaven flew:

Such sure the harpyes were which poyson strow’d,

On cheated Phineus’s false deluding food.

Loud lamentations shake the trembling air,

The powers above the wild confusion share,

Horrors disturb the orders of the sky,

And frighted stars beyond their courses fly.